LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!) – Michael Jackson lost the will to live in recent years, a former close confidante said yesterday, as scores of fans camped out to be the first to see the singer’s final appearance in the This is It movie.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, unveiled lengthy conversations he taped with Jackson during their 1999-2001 friendship, and said the “Thriller” singer suffered deep emotional pain.
“He lost the will to live,” Boteach said. “I think he was just going through the motions of life toward the end.”
Boteach also said that Jackson, who had plastic surgery several times, once confessed that he didn’t want to appear in public, because he felt that he looked like a “lizard.”
Jackson died in Los Angeles on June 25 of a prescription drug overdose, less three weeks before he was due to begin a series of 50 sold-out comeback shows in London.
Back in March, when Jackson visited London to announce the “This Is It” shows, he appeared in a military-style jacket and punched the air.
But the tapes collected by Boteach show Jackson to be a far less confidant man, who feared growing old and had suffered levels of loneliness and pain that the rabbi said “staggers the imagination.”
“I would like some way to disappear, where people don’t see me anymore at some point,” Jackson said in the tapes.
“I don’t want to grow old. I never want to look in the mirror and see that,” the singer said.
Boteach has turned his conversations with the pop star into a book, published yesterday, called The Michael Jackson Tapes.
Boteach’s book comes as Jackson’s fans lined up in Los Angeles three days before tickets go on sale tomorrow for the October 28 release worldwide of This Is It.
The movie is based on footage of Jackson rehearsing for his London shows and demand is expected to be strong for the two-week limited release.
Some 200 fans were camped out yesterday, across the street from where Jackson had his final rehearsals, waiting to buy tickets to the movie premiere. The waiting fans will also get commemorative tickets designed by Jackson for the now cancelled London shows.
